


all good things

by bxnmitchell



Category: EastEnders (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Friends to Lovers, M/M, University
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-06
Updated: 2020-06-13
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:53:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23517229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bxnmitchell/pseuds/bxnmitchell
Summary: ‘You’re a business student, then.’‘Lucky guess.’‘Was it?’‘If it wasn’t, then you’re a psychology student.’‘Sociology, actually.’‘Same difference.’(or: a ben and callum university au)
Relationships: Callum "Halfway" Highway/Ben Mitchell
Comments: 34
Kudos: 222





	1. icebreaker

**Author's Note:**

> trying my hand at a multi chap au for ben and callum - hope you all enjoy!

‘Round six, question seven.’ A middle-aged man with greying hair bellows from the depths of the pub, readjusting his glasses as the crowd settles. ‘Who composed Sweeney Todd?’ Jay sighs, taking a sip of his pint as the rest of the punters begin harshly whispering answers to each other, _no, he did Phantom of the Opera_ spoken somewhere to his left. They’re at a London-themed pub quiz. It’s an icebreaker, apparently, but they’re a month into the first term of their final year and there’s not a single person in the room that hasn’t been here twice a week, every week since the middle of September - there’s not much ice left to break.

‘The one question he’s not here for.’ Lola laughs, but Jay’s one step ahead of her, flipping over their answer sheet and scrawling WHO WROTE SWEENEY TODD? in large enough lettering to fill the entire page. He turns in his seat, struggling to decipher Ben’s figure through the orange glare of streetlights and the layer of dust across the windowpane, and taps his knuckle against the glass. Ben takes a drag of his cigarette as he glances over his shoulder, unimpressed to have had his conversation interrupted, as Jay presses the paper against the glass. Ben’s disgruntled frown becomes an involuntary smile as he carefully mouths _Stephen Sondheim_ , but Jay’s expression makes perfectly clear that he’s not got a clue what Ben’s just said. Ben rolls his eyes, shakes his head, gesturing with an index finger – _one minute_ – as he takes another drag. By the time Jay turns his attention back to Lola, she’s on her feet, beaming away as she stands up to embrace somebody that Jay doesn’t recognise.

‘How long have you been here?’ The stranger asks as they pull away. ‘You should have said you were coming!’ He glances to Jay, wipes away his own smile as he reads the uneasy expression that greets him, and instinctively extends his hand. ‘Sorry, mate. Callum.’

‘You’re alright, mate. Jay.’ Callum’s smile creeps back in – a knowing smile, this time – as raises his eyebrows, glancing back towards Lola. Jay seems to soften.

‘Jay.’ Callum repeats. ‘I’ve heard all about you.’

‘All good things, I hope?’ His eyes flit between Lola and Callum with a faux nervousness.

‘All good things.’ Callum assures him.

Ben makes his return, manoeuvring around the newcomer to drape his leather jacket over the back of his chair and quietly clearing his throat as if to mark his own entrance.

‘Stephen Sondheim.’ He announces, to nobody in particular, but certainly capturing the attention of their guest. He lowers himself back into his seat, eyes scanning their answer sheet.

‘You what?’ Jay responds, having almost entirely forgotten the question he’d asked, his train of thought interrupted by Callum’s arrival.

‘Stephen Sondheim.’ Ben repeats, gesturing for the pen and finally glancing up to find Callum looking right back at him, vaguely mystified. Ben smirks, snapping Callum out of his momentary reverie.

‘I’m guessing that isn’t your name.’ He says, emboldened by the three pints he’s already sunk. Ben lets out a laugh, scribbling the name onto the answer sheet.

‘No – that’s my competitive edge.’ He explains, replacing the cap on the pen. ‘I’ll tell you what, though – you can have that one for free. Ben Mitchell.’ He extends his hand towards him.

‘Callum Highway.’ A pause follows, coinciding with a lull in conversation across the crowd as each team settles on their answer. In the incidental silence, the handshake and the accompanying eye contact each linger for _just_ a second too long, ice-cold fingertips brushing against warm wrists, until one of them remembers where they are. Callum Highway falters under Ben Mitchell’s gaze, deliberately glancing _anywhere else_ to break the eye contact, frowning to himself as he struggles to find the right words and stumbling on them once he does.

‘Uh… Right, well. I-I should, um. I should get back to my team.’ He releases Ben’s hand, gestures vaguely to a table somewhere behind him seating at least three other lads in rugby shirts that match his own: navy and burgundy stripes, surnames and numbers emblazoned across their backs in large white lettering. Ben nods, silent, steeled, ever-present smirk still on his face. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, Lo. Nice to meet you.’ He says, speech slightly too rapid, nodding towards Jay and expertly dodging Ben's eyeline.

‘Number Five.’ Ben mutters as he watches Callum take his seat. It’s a musing, spoken mostly to himself, but spoken loudly enough to catch Lola’s attention. She eyes him from across the table, suspicious at the sound of those two words alone.

‘What do you know about rugby?’ She asks, taking a sip of her drink.

‘Enough to place a bet on it.’ Ben responds.

‘You two seem very close.’ Jay observes, hoping to have found the right moment to make such an observation. Then it’s _Ben’s_ turn to drink, if only to excuse himself from a conversation he’s not willing to participate in. Lola rolls her eyes.

‘Oh, shut up, Jay. He’s more likely to be after you than me.’ She tells him, resting her hand on top of his. Ben smiles into his glass as the crackle of interference sounds from the microphone.

‘Round six, question eight.’

* * *

The quiz stretches on for another three rounds before the landlord _at last_ calls for the answer sheets to make his final tallies. If Ben's honest, he lost interest two rounds ago: he’s focused only on where the night will take them next.

‘Where are we going once we’ve found out how badly we’ve lost, then?’ He asks, draining the last of his pint and pointedly placing the glass back on the table.

‘We’re going home, mate.’ Jay responds without a moment’s hesitation. Ben frowns, checking his watch.

‘It’s eleven o’clock!’ He replies, deliberately overdramatising his outrage.

‘Yeah, eleven o’clock on Wednesday night, Ben.’ Jay gestures towards Lola. ‘Lo’s got a lecture at nine and we’ve got one at ten.’ Ben sighs, drumming his fingers on the table.

‘You are such an old woman.’ He mumbles.

‘I know this might have escaped you for the last two years,’ Lola starts. ‘But we are actually meant to go to class for the degrees we’re paying a fortune for once in a while.’ She scolds, folding her arms across her chest.

‘Well, if I’m paying for it, I’ll skip whatever I want to.’ The crackle of interference makes itself known again; the crowd falls silent.

‘And the scores are in.’ The landlord shuffles his papers. ‘In third place we have The Inbetweeners.’ The cluster of lads around a table in a corner of the pub cheer, their exclamations met with mild applause from the rest of the punters. ‘In second place: Only Here for The Beer.’ More cheering, more polite applause. ‘And the winners of our £50 jackpot, by only one point, are…’ The crowd drums their hands against the edges of their tables. ‘The Highwaymen.’

The winners jump to their feet, almost knocking over their chairs in the process, and the flash of fast-moving navy and burgundy alerts Ben to _exactly_ who’s on the team. Callum glances over the shoulder of his teammate as the two of them perform an elaborate handshake, unintentionally capturing the gaze he’d worked so hard to avoid. Ben smiles, nods towards him, and raises his glass in his direction; Callum can only nod back.

‘Well, that’s how badly we did. We didn’t even place.’ Lola says, sighing. ‘Shall we make a move?’ The bartender rings the oversized bell suspended next to a row of bottles, using his free hand to press against an optic dispenser on a bottle of whiskey, fulfilling somebody’s order as he signals last call. Ben turns his attention back to Callum, moving only his eyes, unwilling to give himself away. Callum empties his glass, quietly excuses himself amidst the thunderous chatter of his teammates, and makes his way to the bar.

Ben looks to Lola, knowing she’ll be more difficult to talk round than Jay when he makes his next proposition.

‘One more?’ He pleads, pressing his hands together. Lola looks to Jay, but he anticipates her stare, warning _don’t look at me!_ before she has a chance to say a word. Lola rolls her eyes, relenting. ‘I’ll get them in.’ Ben beams. He takes his wallet from the pocket of his jacket, feigns indifference as he sidles up to the bar and leans coolly against the slightly sticky wood as Callum turns towards him, slightly startled.

‘The Highwaymen.’ He begins, placing a deliberate emphasis on _Highway_. ‘Does that make you the Team Captain, Number Five?’ Callum laughs, with a confidence that doesn’t seem to find its way to his speech or his body language, and drops his head.

‘Nah, nothing to do with me.’ He responds, before gesturing around the room. ‘We’re in The Dick Turpin – they thought it’d give us good luck.’ He explains.

‘Seems they were right.’ Ben pauses, a thoughtful expression falling across his features. He decides to try his luck. ‘I think that means you owe me two drinks.’

‘How’d you work that one out?’ Callum frowns, but no frown could ever truly overshadow that smile.

‘Well, fifty quid prize fund, split between…’ Ben cranes around Callum to get a view of his table, counts the number of rugby shirts gathered there. ‘Five of you. Your share’s a tenner. Or should I say _our_ share’s a tenner, seeing as I gave you the winning point. Two drinks.’ Callum can’t help but laugh again, resettling himself to angle his body a little more towards Ben. He’s another three pints in now, more emboldened still.

‘Well, _you_ didn’t write Sweeney Todd, did you? Anyway, you said I could have that one for free.’ Ben smiles: half at the joke; half at the fact that Callum’s remembered every word of their brief exchange too.

‘Verbal agreement.’ Ben says simply. ‘And that was before you made a profit on it.’

‘You’re a business student, then.’ Callum quickly deduces – Ben hadn’t realised he was so easy to read.

‘Lucky guess.’ He retorts.

‘Was it?’

‘If it wasn’t, then you’re a psychology student.’

‘Sociology, actually.’

‘Same difference.’ Callum looks momentarily offended.

‘No, it isn’t.’ Ben looks uncertain, but raises his hands in surrender as Callum pushes the sleeves of his shirt up his forearms to stave off the flush that’s creeping up on him and, he imagines, dusting his cheeks with pink. Out of the corner of his eye, Ben notices the bartender casually approaching them. Callum’s thankful for the arrival, for the time he gains in which to compose himself; as far as Ben’s concerned, it’s an unwelcome interruption, but he decides he’s made Callum Highway blush enough for the moment.

‘What can I get you, boys?’ The bartender asks, pushing a tea-towel into a glass with _Budweiser_ printed across it. Ben looks expectantly at Callum.

‘ _Two_ pints please, mate.’ Callum says, without giving Ben so much as a rogue glance as he hands the bartender his card. Ben grins, a blush of his own beginning to warm his cheeks that, if anybody asks, is down to the alcohol.

‘And I’ll have a Carlsberg and a gin and tonic please.’ He adds, dropping a ten-pound note onto the counter. ‘So that’s how you know Lo, is it?’ He picks up precisely where they left off. ‘Where have you been for the last two years, then? I imagine I’d have noticed you before now.’ He gives a quick _thank you_ to the bartender as Callum’s card appears alongside his change, atop a worn-looking paper coaster.

‘I was at a different uni for undergraduate; I’m doing a master’s here.’ Ben looks impressed, raising his eyebrows as he places his change back into his wallet.

‘Brains _and_ beauty.’ Callum’s blush is back, and it really _must_ be obvious by now. ‘Well, maybe I’ll be seeing you more often, then.’ Their drinks materialise; the bartender disappears.

‘Maybe.’ Callum agrees with small shrug as he takes a sip of his pint, ever so slightly disappointed as he senses the conversation drawing to a natural close. Ben carefully picks up all three of his drinks and prepares to return to his table. Any kind of goodbye feels like entirely the wrong thing to say to somebody you’ve just met. Instead, they each give a gentle smile, allow their shared glance to linger for a second too long, against their better judgments, and return to their tables.

Ben, Jay, and Lola, are shrugging on their jackets by the time Callum and his friends are on their way out of the pub half an hour later. Callum places a hand on Number Seven’s shoulder as he passes Lola’s chair, promising he’ll be _two seconds!_

‘We still on for tomorrow?’ He asks, once the door swings shut.

‘Yeah, course!’ Lola responds. ‘Library? Two-ish?’ Callum nods, pulling her into another embrace with one arm and shaking Jay’s hand for a second time with his free hand. ‘Genuinely lovely to meet you, mate.’ He turns towards Ben, face dropping as a realisation dawns on him.

‘I still owe you a drink.’ He says. Ben waves a dismissive hand and tries to bite back a smile.

‘Next time.’ He says. With that, Callum’s out of the door.

‘What could he possibly owe you a drink for?’ Jay asks.

‘Stephen Sondheim.’


	2. next time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i've made a few tweaks to chapter one (nothing relating to the events, only to the prose itself, which when i read it back it felt a little bit stunted). i don't expect anybody to re-read it, and you won't need to for this chapter or any other.
> 
> enjoy! x

‘Are you getting up or what?!’

It’s muffled, called from somewhere else in the flat and struggling its way to Ben’s bedroom. He’s ignored three wake-up calls so far, but he has a feeling that Jay might be more difficult to get rid of than an alarm with a snooze button. Ben estimates that he’s got ninety seconds before Jay appears in the bedroom doorway – not having bothered to knock – with a scathing look on his face and a biting comment on the tip of his tongue.

He reluctantly, _barely_ , opens his eyes to the muted morning light peeking in from around the curtains, feeling around on the empty bed next to him until his hand finds his phone. He holds it at arm’s length, both anticipating the inevitable glare and hoping to give himself a fighting chance at deciphering anything on the screen without his glasses. It’s nearing nine, and he’s running out of time if he’s aiming to get up, dressed, and out of the door on time to go to a lecture he can’t convince himself to be interested in. But, if he’s honest, right now the only thing he’s aiming to do is keep his eyes open.

He’d been awake most of the night, an unplaceable, unnameable energy coursing through him. It had started with the singular, isolated reminiscence of a lingering handshake, and his train of thought had seemed initially content to end there. One memory, and _only_ one memory in the persistent haze of the alcohol he'd consumed over the course of the evening, but that one memory had run away from him the second he’d closed his eyes.

In the darkness of his own interior, he’d involuntarily recalled facts, stray pieces of information, in what had masterfully disguised itself as a purely epistemological exercise. Tall, rugby player, number five, master’s, sociology. But such a systematic rundown of the two exchanges he couldn’t shake led only to observations, and frankly that alone had been enough to unsettle him. Kind eyes, nervous smile, lightweight. He’d been through those two exchanges totalling no more than three minutes countless times before he’d remembered the third, navigating the facts and the observations and unintentionally landing on the immediately, physically sobering realisation of an absentmindedly promised _next time_ that had forced his eyes back open and had him gazing out into the void of his unlit bedroom at quarter to two in the morning.

What on _earth_ had he said that for? He’s had that exchange with countless people on countless occasions, and he’s never once said _that_.

It should have been forgettable, unremarkable.

But Callum had looked at him like he was truly sorry that he’d only bought him one drink, like he really did owe Ben something when Ben had been joking from the beginning, just trying his luck with someone he’d been introduced to at a pub he goes to twice a week, and Ben, meaning only to say, _it’s okay!_ had instead said _next time_.

And that was it. A promised _n_ _ext time_ , and one senseless _what if?_ after another, starting with Callum and ending somewhere very different, with _someone_ very different, somewhere he can’t often bring himself to go back to, until he’d well and truly backed himself into a corner, wound himself up so much he couldn’t find his way back to some semblance of rationality. He must have exhausted every avenue, every one of them a dead-end, before he’d eventually exhausted himself too.

And now, as he lays here at 8:55am, struggling to stay awake, he can feel it happening again. He’s never been more thankful for Jay shouting his name in his life.

‘Ben!’ He’s already twisting the door handle, allowing the daylight to filter in from the landing, a new beam of light intersecting with the beam already breaking through the gap in the haphazardly drawn curtains. ‘Are you getting up?’ He places a careful emphasis on each word. And, God, Ben cannot think of anything he wants to do less.

That's a lie. There’s one thing he’d rather do less: lay here and let his brain stage a matinee performance of last night’s show.

So, yes, he is getting up.

‘Yes, Jay. I’m getting up.’ He throws back the duvet, sits up on the edge of the bed, pausing only to put his glasses on. ‘You can tell me all about the reading I’m supposed to have done on the way there.’ He taps his hand against Jay’s cheek on his way to the bathroom.

‘You can piss off!’ Jay calls after him. ‘You’re lucky I woke you up in the first place!’

* * *

To his credit, Ben’s ready with time to spare, eager to get out of the flat in hopes that the fresh air – if you can call the polluted atmosphere of central London anything close to _fresh_ – will clear his mind.

‘I can’t believe you’re going to a class before midday.’ Jay muses aloud as the pair arrive at the campus.

‘How many times are you going to make that joke before you get bored of your own voice?’ Ben responds, because it’s the _Ben_ thing to say, isn’t it? In truth, he’s thankful for the mindless chatter. He’s thankful for mindless, full stop.

‘Well, I definitely ain’t bored yet.’ Jay laughs, readjusting the strap of his bag and glancing down at his watch. He raises his eyebrows. ‘Not only are you going to a class before midday, you are in fact _early_ for that class. We’ve got time to get a coffee.’ Ben wants to keep the act up, carry on being Ben about it, have another ready-made clever remark to shoot back at him. But he’s running on three and a half hours sleep and coffee sounds _fantastic_.

The two of them make their way into the foyer of the library, which houses one of the many cafes on campus. They’re sharing a joke, laughing a little too loudly for this time in the morning, if the faces of the people around them are anything to go by.

Ben glances towards the disarray of cheaply made wooden chairs and tables, and immediately wishes they’d picked _any_ other café. There’s a million of them on this campus, half of them closer to their lecture hall than this one, and not a single one of them seating Callum Highway.

He considers turning around, walking in the opposite direction, telling Jay _I’ve changed my mind – I’ll see you at the lecture hall_. But it’s too late – Callum’s already seen them, having had his attention captured by the rapturous laughter that had captured everybody else’s attention too, and Jay’s already on his way over to him.

‘Morning!’ Callum greets from behind his laptop. Ben grimaces, quickly understanding how the rest of the morning crowd must have felt at the sound of his own laughter in the moments prior. The grimace is partially involuntary, partially an aspect of _being Ben_. Callum’s nervous smile gains a nervous frown.

‘Ignore him.’ Jay tells him. ‘He didn’t realise there were two nine o’clocks in one day.’ Ben rolls his eyes as Callum lets out a light laugh. ‘You working already?’ Jay asks, gesturing to the pile of papers next to Callum’s laptop. ‘Lo said you weren’t meeting up until later.’ Callum’s nodding before Jay’s finished his sentence.

‘I had training this morning and I’ve got class at eleven. No point going home to come back two hours later.’ He explains, shrugging, and it’s only then that Ben really takes in Callum’s appearance. He’s casually dressed – light-wash jeans, the collar of a t-shirt peeking out from underneath a charcoal grey hoodie with his team’s crest embroidered on the left chest. His sleeves are pushed up his forearms, revealing a small tell-tale smear of mud on the back of his arm. Ben doesn’t realise he’s tuned out of a conversation he wasn’t part of until Jay’s tapping his arm, bringing him back to earth.

‘What?’ He snaps.

‘I said are we getting this coffee or not? What is the matter with you today?’

‘Nothing’s the matter with me.’ It’s quick, defensive. ‘Yes. Go and order then.’ He gestures vaguely in the direction of the counter.

Ben’s focused on Jay, on playing indifference, and entirely misses Callum’s hesitation as he struggles to decide if he should interject without last night's liquid courage to spur him on; struggles to decide if now’s the right time to do this, or if there’s ever going to be a right time to do it. There was a _warmth_ to Ben last night that Callum can’t quite find now, and he’s berating himself for dwelling on something that Ben _clearly_ hasn’t give a second thought. Does he even remember it? As he watches Jay head towards the counter, Callum knows he has a split-second left in which to make his decision.

‘Well,’ he starts, and there's no going back now. ‘I still owe you a drink, don’t I? Do non-alcoholic drinks fall under that verbal agreement?’ He looks for a sign that Ben recognises his own words, and has to mask his own surprise when _yes_ , that was _definitely_ a flicker of realisation.

Because Ben realises this is his get-out clause. This is _next time_. A smirk appears on his face; a smirk that Callum earnestly misreads.

‘Technically, drink _is_ a blanket term. So, I suppose so.’ He replies, playful tone suggesting that he’s letting Callum get away with something, that _Callum’s_ the one who’s just discovered the get-out clause. Callum smiles, reaching down to retrieve his wallet from the outside pocket of his training bag, and Ben pushes back something that feels an awful lot like guilt.

The two of them arrive at the counter just as Jay moves to the other end of it, waiting to collect his drink.

‘What can I get you?’ The barista asks. Callum looks to Ben, giving him a cue to place his order first.

‘I’ll have an Americano, please. Medium.’ He says, prompting the barista to press against the touch screen in front of her.

‘Your name?’ She asks, picking up a Sharpie.

‘Ben.’ She nods, scribbling his name across a takeaway cup.

‘And I’ll get a large hot chocolate, please. For Callum.’ He removes his card from his wallet as Ben frowns disbelievingly in his direction. ‘What?’ He thanks the barrista for his receipt.

‘Hot chocolate at ten in the morning?’ He says. The two of them join Jay at the opposite end of the counter.

‘Yes, hot chocolate at ten in the morning.’ Callum replies. It’s clear he’s had this conversation before. ‘If _you_ want to pretend you like the taste of coffee with no milk in it, that’s fine, but I won’t lie to myself. I'll have no part in it. Especially not when it costs me three quid every time.’ And Ben can’t really argue with that. So, instead, he laughs, and then quickly tries to regain some composure.

His attempts at pulling himself together are interrupted by Lola appearing beside them and pressing a kiss to Jay’s cheek, mercifully rescuing Ben from having to navigate his way through more small talk he didn’t mean to engage in.

‘You’re out early.’ Jay says, as his coffee materialises next to him.

‘I know. It turns out he didn’t want to be teaching a class at nine in the morning any more than we wanted to be sitting in one.’ She laughs. ‘Thought I’d get myself a coffee before I meet the girls to reward myself for going. Surprised to see you here, though.’ She gestures to Ben, and Ben silently thanks her – if _she’s_ keeping his image up, he doesn’t have to orchestrate the façade of normality himself.

‘Yeah, very good. I’ve already had that one seven times from your boyfriend, though. Keep up, Lo.’ He responds.

‘Ben and Callum.’ A second barrista announces, setting down two drinks, one considerably taller than the other. Callum picks up both cups, extending the smaller one towards Ben, who immediately obliges, hoping to have all this over and done with as quickly as possible.

But his fingertips brush against Callum’s own as he moves to take his drink, and every detail of a lingering handshake come instantaneously flooding back.

But that’s it, isn’t it? Two drinks – that’s what Ben said. With a quiet _thank you_ spoken while Jay asks Lola what they should have for dinner tonight, they’re even.

‘Right. Come on, then.’ Jay places his hand on Ben’s shoulder. ‘Let’s go.’

So, that’s what they do: they go to class.

And sat in this fluorescently lit, vaguely rundown lecture theatre surrounded by fifty other people, all incessantly typing away, Ben can’t focus on a single second it. Every moment of whatever just happened felt like déjà vu, except for the only detail that matters: there was no promise of a _next time_. Staring into the open expanse of the document on his laptop screen – blank, save only for today’s date – suddenly feels exactly like staring into the void of his unlit bedroom. Across every _what if_ , through every eventuality he’d exhausted, Ben had never once considered that this, whatever _this_ is, could all end exactly as quickly as it had started. And that had been the only eventuality that he’d really been hoping for, hadn’t it? The eventuality that would put an _end_ to the _what ifs_. So, why doesn’t this feel like a victory?

He scratches against the cardboard sleeve around his coffee, now lukewarm at best, and tries and fails to give at least ten minutes of his attention to whatever their professor is telling them about business models and clientele.

‘I don’t know why you bother.’ Jay says, exasperated, when their professor begins closing down various PowerPoint windows. Ben looks confused. ‘You didn’t write a single thing down.’

‘You realise he’s telling us stuff we’ve known for years, don’t you?’ Ben retorts, closing his laptop and in doing so removing the still-blank document from his mind.

‘Maybe so, Ben, but I don’t think you’ll get many marks for writing “Phil Mitchell taught me that, but don’t ask me how he knew”, in an exam do you?’ Ben knows Jay means to be funny, light-hearted, but he’d found that name down every avenue he’d tried last night, more often than not right at the end of it, and he can’t even bring himself to reply. Jay glances back at him in the midst of his silence as they exit the lecture hall, a cold breeze blowing a light rain against them. ‘You are in a _proper_ mood today, ain’t ya?’

‘Leave it out, Jay.’

They make the journey back to the front of the campus in relative silence, intending to return to the flat, but only get as far as the library before the rain picks up. Jay makes a quick executive decision: _I am not walking home in that_.

That’s how Ben finds himself scanning every visible inch of a library he’s been to more times today than in the last fortnight, looking for a charcoal grey hoodie, unsure if he’s hoping to actually see it. There’s no sign of Callum in the café in the foyer, and Ben quickly brushes off Jay’s suggestion that they go and sit in a silent study area. If he could find himself spiralling despite a steady stream of noise and an endless series of graphs and tables, he’s certain that silence isn’t something he can take. Instead, he’ll take solace in communal study, where Jay lets him read the notes he’d made in their lecture and translates every clumsy bit of shorthand that Ben can’t decipher. For a while, he feels like he’s getting back to himself, when their laughter begins to draw attention again, until Jay’s phone buzzes against the desk in front of them.

‘Lo’s on her way up.’ Jay casually informs Ben as he types out a response. Ben checks his watch, realising that he’d completely lost track of the time. He hadn’t meant to be here this long. It’s two o’clock – Lola’s supposed to be meeting Callum here, now.

‘From where?’ He asks, trying to keep his voice steady, hoping against hope that Jay means to say that Lola’s ‘on her way up’ from the other side of campus, giving him enough time to make a getaway.

‘From the first floor.’ Jay laughs, as if the answer’s obvious. Ben silently organises the papers Jay had given him, closes his notebook, replaces the cap on his pen, and looks up to see Lola walking through the door, that charcoal grey hoodie he’d been looking for following close behind her.

The two seats opposite Jay and Ben are empty, and Ben knows exactly how this is going to play out. Lola will sit opposite Jay, leaving Callum to sit opposite Ben, and there are worse people to be sat opposite in the early afternoon, a skylight revealing an overcast almost-winter sky directly above them that fights against the warm lighting of the library. Ben would happily sit here and flirt with him all day if he could, but they’ve had their next time, and that next time was the ending Ben hadn’t even planned for, not the beginning that Callum and his kind eyes, nervous smile thought he had created.

Ben waits for the two of them to sit down, avoids eye contact, and pretends to be looking at something on his phone.

‘Right, I’d better be off.’ He announces, sliding his laptop into his bag and returning Jay’s papers to their rightful owner.

‘Where you going?’ Lola asks.

‘Somewhere to be.’ Ben replies, widening his eyes and raising his eyebrows in a way all too familiar to Jay and Lola. From the grim expressions on their faces, Callum seems to make the right inference, the one Ben had planted with a lie.

With no _ridiculous_ promise of a next time, he’s gone, down the stairs, out of the door without a moment’s hesitation, hoping to have closed off all those _what ifs_ for good.


	3. refraction

In hindsight, avoiding Callum at a library was never really going to be a problem, was it? It was a fluke that Ben had even been there _at all_ , let alone that he’d been there twice in one day. That Callum had been there on both of those occasions was merely a testament to his work ethic.

So, all he really had to do to avoid Callum was avoid the library during business hours. _Easy_.

And, for a while, it really _was_ that easy, but Lola and Callum grew ever closer, _are_ growing ever closer still.

Callum’s become something of a household name, and Ben’s heard more about him than he’d ever cared to know – the accidental uncovering of detail has only clarified the image of Callum he’d constructed; Ben had only ever wanted to obscure it.

He’s had to get a little more inventive with his excuses, more often than not using them to unravel plans that have already been made.

At first, he’d moved on to the obvious: he’d tell Lola _yeah, I’ll go_ when she’d ask if he wanted to go to the cinema and have an _actually…_ prepared for an hour or so later, when she’d inevitably add that Callum would be joining them.

‘What is it this time? Or should I say _who_ is it this time?’

Ben would do little more than show her a picture of an online match from across the kitchen, and that would be enough to get him off the hook.

But that trick, too, quickly lost its novelty – even Ben Mitchell couldn’t find a new match on a dating app as often as he would have needed to if he was hoping to recycle the same excuse day in, day out.

It had become predictable, and we can’t have that, can we? Ben Mitchell is many things, but predictable – read: _boring_ – is not one of them.

Thankfully, Ben knows enough people frequenting enough pubs in London that he needs only to pair a location with a suspect to construct a convincing, often sensational alibi.

Convincing though they may be, they are, at their core, _Mitchell_ alibis: nine times out of ten, they are pure fiction.

  
If they are sensational, they are sensational cover-ups for a truth he doesn’t care to confess: avoiding Callum Highway has never been the problem. Avoiding the _thought_ of Callum Highway is the problem.

So, if the alibi places Ben at a different pub with a different group of friends, then the simple truth is that he’s at the kitchen table drinking the flat dry until he forgets how to think at all and vanishing from the scene before Jay and Lola return from wherever they’ve been this time.

But amidst those nine-times-out-of-ten falsehoods, there lies the occasional truth: Ben really _has_ been at a law society social with a different group of friends tonight. And for the first time in as long as he can remember, he’s truly enjoyed himself, finding distraction to be far more achievable when it’s not his only aim. Maybe he should feel guilty for rolling in at almost four in the morning, for letting the door slam shut, for dropping his keys onto the kitchen counter quite so loudly, but he’s spent however long it’s been enduring the knowledge that everyone else is _happy_ , so maybe they deserve to know that he’s had one night in that stretch that he doesn’t want to completely forget.

If Ben hadn’t lost track of the date sometime last week, he’d know that the first round of assignment deadlines is fast-approaching. That not-so-small detail had been the catalyst for Lola and Callum spending so much time at the library together, where they each did what they could to help one another restructure this sentence or reorder that paragraph. A friendship had quickly blossomed, and that friendship was what had left Ben constructing an elaborate web of excuses.

As deadline season approaches, it approaches across the campus, leaving the library full to the brim with students operating in a climate of ever-increasing panic. They’d tried cafes, but found that the pressure of the expectation of relaxation had only made matters worse. The pubs, too, were an absolute no-go – apparently, a Wetherspoons in London is packed even at two in the afternoon, and it’s no surprise that a somewhat unstable, certainly unhygienic table doesn’t double well as a desk.

Eventually, Lola suggests that they just collect their library books and work at the flat.

She pushes open the front door, letting Callum step in before her.

‘Alright, you two?’ Jay calls from the kitchen table, running a highlighter across a sheet of paper.

‘Alright, babe.’ Lola responds as the two of them cross through the living area to the kitchen. ‘Just stick your coat anywhere.’ She tells Callum. He sheds his bag and coat, draping the latter across the back of the sofa he finds himself next to, before pausing to take in his surroundings. The sofa he’s just put his coat on is upholstered with a plush fabric and furnished with multiple cushions; it runs perpendicularly to another, identical sofa, identically furnished, both of them angled towards a glass coffee table. He glances directly across the room towards a TV – not needlessly large, but certainly big enough for a flat this size, perched in front of a window that’s framed by floor-length curtains. Turning behind him, he finds a sleek, modern kitchen, each appliance carefully coordinated with every other. He lets his gaze drift across dark wooden countertops, eventually landing on Jay, who leans over a glass dining table, reading intently from a textbook.

Callum realises he’s not standing in a _student_ flat – it’s a _London_ flat. He briefly wonders where on earth they’re getting the money for all this, but thinks better of going so far as to ask.

‘This is incredible.’ Is what he settles on. Lola and Jay share a pointed look.

‘Yeah, it’s nice. Not very big, but it’s London, ain’t it? And it’s big enough for the three of us, I suppose.’ Ah, the infamous third flatmate.

‘Well, it’s got more than one place to sit, the bin ain’t overflowing, and I can actually see the bottom of the kitchen sink, so I’d take this over my room in halls any day.’ He laughs, prompting Jay and Lola to do the same.

‘Do you want a drink or anything?’ Lola asks as Callum places his laptop on the kitchen table. He leaves the seat opposite Jay empty, instead taking the one beside it. ‘It ain’t Starbucks, but it is free.’ She laughs.

‘Please.’ Callum smiles. ‘Tea would be lovely.’

‘Jay?’

‘Yeah, go on. I’ll have a tea as well.’ Lola nods as she switches on the kettle.

‘You seen him today?’ She asks. Jay releases a heavy sigh, placing his pen down on the table.

‘No. Heard him come in at four in the morning though, didn’t I?’ He leans back in his chair. ‘Starting to think he’s in a different time zone.’ He stays silent for a moment. ‘I’m worried about him, Lo.’

‘I know, and I love him, Jay, but we can’t put our lives on hold for him. He’ll be alright.’ She sounds uncertain, and Jay looks like he doesn’t believe a word she’s saying. He shakes his head, turning his attention back to his reading as the kettle finishes boiling.

‘Right, well, since his lordship won’t be joining us, Callum can use one of his mugs. My other one’s in the dishwasher.’ Lola knows that she’s speaking to fill the silence, but it’s a silence Callum hadn’t noticed, distracted by the talk of this mysterious flatmate.

Lola places her own mug down first – black, with _I WOKE UP LIKE THIS_ embossed across it in pink lettering – alongside a packet of chocolate biscuits.

‘Seeing as we didn’t think to get lunch…’ She says, by way of an explanation. She passes Jay a mug with _this time next year…_ printed on one side and, Callum imagines, _we’ll be millionaires_ , on the other, if the _Trotter’s Independent Trading Co_ logo that reveals itself on the base of the mug as Jay takes a sip is anything to go by. Callum shifts a book to make room on the table as a white mug emblazoned with the letter B appears beside him, and the penny finally drops.

The infamous third flatmate is _Ben_. They're talking about _Ben_.

‘Let me know if it needs more milk or anything.’ Callum tries to compose himself, lifting the mug to his lips.

‘No, that’s perfect. Thank you.’ He smiles.

Against the backdrop of Jay and Lola’s idle chat, he tries in vain to recall the things that Lola had said about her _flatmate_ before that night at the Dick Turpin and align them with everything he’s heard about _Ben_ since, but with Jay’s exclamation of _here he is!_ at the sound of approaching footsteps, every thought evaporates.

‘Don’t start, Jay.’

Callum glances up at the sound of his voice – _god_ , he’s missed that voice – and finds himself looking at somebody he barely recognises, dressed in a long-sleeved khaki green shirt and black tracksuit bottoms with a diagonal zip running across each thigh, glasses perched on the bridge of his nose. The _rough around the edges_ memory of Ben that Callum hasn’t been able to shake seems a world away.

In all honesty, there’s a chance that Callum had started with the memory of a leather jacket on the back of a chair and fabricated his own version of Ben entirely, distinctly separate from either of the versions he’s encountered.

Whichever version this is seems to hesitate, hovering at the threshold of the living room as he decides whether or not to bolt.

For a moment, Callum thinks he’s perfectly right to hesitate. Yes, he’s in _Ben’s_ flat, at _Ben’s_ kitchen table, with _Ben’s_ friends, but he can’t help but feel like Ben’s the one who’s intruding. Callum’s clever enough to know when somebody’s avoiding him, and yet Ben’s dominated every other thought he’s had over the last two weeks. Wasn’t that enough for him?

Strangely, Ben really _does_ feel like he’s intruding, realising that in his self-induced absence the three people before him have developed a companionship that he imagines doesn’t include him, but he’ll be damned if he’ll let himself feel unwelcome in his own home. He smiles bitterly towards the cruelty of whatever universal force keeps doing this to him.

Finally, if unintentionally, he meets Callum’s gaze, allowing Callum to misread a smile that he wasn’t meant to see, as a smirk.

The memory of the man Callum had expected to see standing in that doorway reconstructs itself.

‘What time did you get home at last night, then?’ Jay asks, as Ben moves towards the kitchen.

‘I think you know the answer to that, and you know that it was this morning.’ He retorts, yawning as he touches the back of his hand to the kettle to gauge the temperature of the water left inside it. He runs his other hand through his un-styled hair as he reaches up to open the cabinet above him, searching for a mug with the letter B on it.

When he doesn’t find it, he turns to Lola, who, anticipating his question, points towards Callum’s tea.

‘Sorry.’ Callum says immediately, sincerely, and the look on his face screams of the genuinely apologetic expression he’d been wearing when he’d told Ben that he _still owed him a drink_.

‘It’s alright.’ Ben tells him, with a smile that, this time, Callum takes only for a smile. ‘There’s enough _mugs_ in this flat to go around, ain’t there, you pair?’ He looks between Jay and Lola, then turns back to the cupboard.

‘Very funny. Where were you, anyway?’ Lola asks while Ben stirs his coffee.

‘Law social.’ He says simply, leaning back against the kitchen counter and taking a sip. Jay immediately raises his eyebrows, an incredulous expression on his face.

‘Does your dad know you’ve made friends with half the _law_ faculty?’

‘I had a lovely evening, yeah, Jay, cheers for asking.’ He crosses to the table, taking a biscuit from the open packet.

‘I’m serious, Ben. What were _you_ doing at a law social?’

‘Research. _Networking_.’ Callum struggles to decide if networking really means networking, or something else altogether. Ben raises the back cover of Jay’s textbook.

‘Are you going to join us and actually do some work today considering your deadline’s in ten days?’ Lola interjects, hoping to stop Jay before he can give away anything more. Ben reads her features and knows that she’s trying to help him. He takes his cue to deliver a punchline, gesturing to Jay’s mug.

‘Only fools and horses work, Lo.’ He widens his eyes tauntingly, but Jay’s not finished.

‘I thought the point of all this,’ Jay gestures to the papers strewn across the table. ‘Was that you didn’t want to be like Phil? I thought you wanted to break the cycle?’

Jay regrets his words the second they leave his mouth, and Ben dreads to think what Jay and Lola are willing to say about him when in his absence if they’ll go _this_ far when he’s standing in front of them.

He takes his bottom lip between his teeth and bites back a much harsher retaliation than the noncommittal response he eventually vocalises, eyes narrowed.

‘Just worry about yourself, Jay.’

And with that, he retreats back to his room, gone as quickly as he’d appeared.

‘What the _hell_ did you do that for?’ Lola hisses, once she hears the bedroom door click closed.

Callum couldn’t have put it better himself.

[12:25] _Lola: Sorry xx_

[12:26] _Ben: Not your fault x_

[12:26] _Lola: He’s worried xx_

[12:26] _Ben: He’s got a funny way of showing it. X_

[12:27] _Lola: Pub later? Clear the air? Xx_

[12:27] _Ben: Who with? X_

[12:27] _Lola: Just us four xx_

Ben hadn’t realised there was an _us four_.

If anything, right now he’d have put his money on an _us three_ _and_ _you_.

But he’d always known it couldn’t go on like this forever.

[12:29] _Ben: Okay x_

* * *

He’s trying. He’s really, _truly_ trying, but he feels like he’s forgotten how to do this, how to sit in a pub and act like you own the place and have everyone around you act like you might be right.

There’s no snapping, no biting comments, no disapproving stares from the people around the table. He’s saying all the right things, getting all the right reactions. Everything’s back to normal, and yet he still feels like his world’s been knocked off its axis, like it’s a new normal altogether.

He excuses himself with a perfectly timed joke, taking a packet of cigarettes and a lighter from the pocket of his jacket on his way out, waits _just_ long enough to drop his smile before bracing himself for the cold October air as he steps into the beer garden. He perches himself on the bench of a picnic table, facing away from the table itself.

If he’d held his smile for a second longer, he probably would have gotten away with it.

He should feel cheated when the door swings open again and Callum appears beside him, and yet something in him tells him to be grateful that somebody’s paying attention.

‘Bad for you, them things.’ He gestures to the cigarette, then places his hands in his pockets, hoping to stave off the cold.

‘I don’t do it all the time.’ Ben explains. ‘I’m a social smoker.’ Callum raises his eyebrows, eyes scanning the rest of the beer garden, each and every table entirely empty. 

‘Doesn’t look very social to me.’ Ben laughs.

‘Well, you’re here, ain’t you?’ He looks up.

‘Yeah,’ Callum meets his gaze with a gentle smile and small nod. ‘Yeah, I’m here.’ Ben turns his gaze back to the floor, taking a final drag of his cigarette as Callum sits down next to him. They rest their backs against the edge of the table, staring straight ahead, thighs just touching.

Callum sighs in a way that lets Ben know he’s preparing himself to speak; Ben struggles to resist the urge to make another joke and another quick exit.

‘Have I done something to upset you?’ Ben’s not sure what he’d been expecting Callum to say, but it certainly wasn’t that. He snaps to look at him.

‘What? _No_.’ He shakes his head, knowing he’s responded too quickly, but the relief that floods Callum’s features leaves him more than willing to embarrass himself.

‘Then why have you been avoiding me?’

‘I haven’t been avoiding you.’ He diverts his eyes. Not so willing to embarrass himself after all, then.

‘I’ve spent a lot of time with people that you were spending every waking second with before you met me, and you’re nowhere to be seen.’ Ben scoffs, straightening his back.

‘You don’t know anything about me, Number Five.’ He extends the last two words.

‘ _You_ don’t know anything about _me_ , but you’ve avoided me anyway.’ And he can’t really argue with that, can he?

Ben’s been running from his own imagination; Callum’s been building monuments in his.

‘They’re worried about you, you know.’ Callum says, after a moment of a silence. ‘Ben, whatever this business with your dad is…’

'It definitely ain't _your_ business, Callum.' Ben closes his eyes and inhales deeply, tries to talk himself down from his breaking point, tries stop himself saying something he knows he’ll regret, if this really is going to be his new normal.

‘I-I’m not… I’m not saying it to pry. It’s nothing to do with me, I know that. It never will be anything to do with me.’

‘Good to know we’re on the same page then.’ Ben laughs bitterly, crossing his arms across his chest.

‘I’m just saying that I get it. I get what it feels like to want to break the cycle.’ His voice drifts off as he struggles towards the end of his sentence, but he finds himself reignited when Ben turns to look at him. ‘I know what it’s like to be trying to please someone and trying to fight against everything they’ve ever taught you at the same time.’

With every sentence that tumbles out of Callum’s mouth, another corner of the image that Ben had been trying to obscure becomes clearer.

He _knows_ the look in Callum’s eye, knows the slight waver in his voice, knows how hard it is to say what he’s just said.

They’re two people that couldn’t be further from each other, if every snippet of information that Lola’s let slip about Callum in casual conversation can be taken as truth, and yet Ben’s seeing something of himself in the man before him. It’s a mirror image, but in the truest sense – he’s not seeing himself; he’s seeing an inverted version of himself.

He’s seeing the person that broke the cycle.

Somewhere along the way, Callum figured out how to refract the beam of light that radiates so effortlessly from him, to take himself in another direction.

Ben doesn’t realise how long they’ve been here for until Callum shatters the silence.

‘I’ll leave you alone. Don’t stay out here too long, yeah?’ He says, rising to his feet and heading for the door.

‘Callum?’ He turns back to Ben. ‘Thank you.’ Callum gives him that soft smile again, and then disappears back into the pub.

Maybe they are on the same page after all.


	4. all hallow's eve

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you to @forcallumiwould on twitter for asking if there would be a halloween party - there is now!

**_Group_ ** _: Ben (+447376269940), Lola (+447895921846), Callum (+447504287041), Jay (+447392602956)_

**31 st October**

[15:21] _Ben: What are we doing tonight?_

[15:21] _Ben: SU fright night or party at Alex Connor’s?_

[15:21] _Ben: And if anyone says “nothing” I’m not talking to you_

[15:23] _Lola: Is that meant to be a threat?_

[15:24] _Jay: Not finished the assignment yet_

[15:24] _Ben: And? I ain’t even started_

[15:25] _Lola: I’ll go out but I ain't buying a ticket to the SU when we can go to a party for free_

[15:25] _Jay: I’ll go for a couple of hours then_

[15:26] _Lola: Callum?_

[15:27] _Callum: Will be going with the rugby lot but will be there :)_

[15:27] _Jay: You and Ben could go as cops and robbers hahaha_

[15:27] _Ben: ???_

[15:28] _Lola: Ignore him. Will be ready for 8:30_

* * *

‘That ain’t a costume.’ Jay eyes Ben’s underwhelming ensemble with disapproval. He appears to be dressed as himself.

‘Uh, yes, it is.’ He pulls the front of his denim jacket open to reveal a thin sheet of cardboard sellotaped to his shirt, the words _LIFE AND SOUL_ written across it in red ink. ‘I’m the life and soul of the party.’ He smirks, pointing proudly to the lettering.

‘Are you serious? It’s Halloween – you’re meant to go as something scary, not something smug.’

‘Those are big words for a bloke dressed as what I can only assume is the ghost of Ozzy Osbourne.’ Ben laughs, raising his eyebrows as he picks up his door keys. Jay readjusts his top hat, frowning as he moves a section of a matted wig away from his face. He nods towards the doorway, and Ben turns to see Lola triumphantly placing a witch’s hat on top of a wig of her own, this one purple. ‘Well,’ Ben starts, heading towards the front door. ‘No points for originality, Lo, but at least we know what you’re meant to be.’ He opens the door, gesturing for the two of them to lead the way.

They’re fashionably late, and the party’s already in full swing by the time somebody dressed as a budget Dracula opens the door to them, releasing the unmistakable sound of the _Ghostbusters_ theme – part of an evidently carefully curated playlist – into the streets of London. They’ve been inside for all of thirty seconds when two guests, one decked out in impressive special effects makeup and the other calling a red cape a costume, greet Ben at the door. He embraces each of them, introducing them as Sasha and Ryan to Jay and Lola as they lead the new arrivals past three Harley Quinns and two Pennywises, eventually arriving at a dining table covered with a plastic tablecloth and housing an excess of alcohol.

‘Spirits are here,’ Sasha stops to laugh at a joke she hadn’t intended to make. ‘Mixers over there. Just help yourselves, yeah?’ Ben nods, smiling as he waves the two of them off. No sooner have they disappeared than Callum appears in their place, wearing black jeans, a white t-shirt, and a black leather jacket, empty beer bottle in hand. He breaks into a grin the moment he realises who he’s looking at, throwing the bottle into a bin liner and then throwing an arm around Lola, being careful not to dislodge her hat.

‘Bloody hell, have you come as Ben?’ Jay laughs, and Callum meets his remark with a faux outrage.

‘I’m a T-bird. It’s a group costume, but I suppose it don’t really work when we’re not standing together, does it?’ He chuckles, readjusting his jacket. It’s working perfectly well, if you ask Ben. Callum frowns, struggling to read the words on Ben’s chest in such dim lighting.

‘Life and soul of the party.’ Callum rolls his eyes. ‘Very good.’

‘I thought so too.’ Is Ben’s self-satisfied response.

And how true it is.

Drinks in hand, the four of them brave the crowds once more, and Ben finds himself immediately intercepted by yet another group of guests. Callum hovers by Jay and Lola, keeping track of the conversation well enough to know when to nod, laugh, or to utter a quiet _yeah_ , and stealing a discreet glance at Ben at every opportunity.

He’s perched on the edge of a wicker dining chair, elbows resting on his knees and a bottle of beer in hand as he leans towards his audience: three fifths of the Spice Girls, Fred Flintstone, and Iron Man, seated across a worn leather sofa and an unstable coffee table. Each of Ben’s interjections is a punchline, if the laughter that chases his every word is any indication. He pauses to take a sip of his beer, cheerful expression almost faltering as he waits impatiently for his next cue, and he wastes no time in taking it once he finds it.

Callum tears his eyes away from the scene for just long enough to offer Jay and Lola another conversation starter after one too many noncommittal responses. He returns to the action to find Ben meeting his glance. The life and soul of the party smirks, rolling his eyes as he gestures to his audience, and as Callum lets out a laugh, he realises that, in fact, _they_ were never the audience at all. The performance was for Callum, and Ben was never acting – if anything, he was directing. The thought is almost sublime: as frightening as it is impressive.

Ben knows when he’s being watched, knows how to stage a more elaborate performance than a one-man show, spurred on by the knowledge that his audience could pull back the curtain and shatter the illusion of the act.

Their shared, quiet encounter in the garden of a pub should have eliminated all this shared intrigue; it should have calmed the storm, quelled the curiosity, but instead it granted them permission to pay attention. The series of inadvertent observations that sent Ben spiralling seem insufficient now, inconsequential, even, placing Ben at a disadvantage when Callum appears to be dedicating himself to working Ben out.

It seems only fair that Ben returns the favour.

He leans forwards once more, this time to say a quick _see you later_ to his unwitting ensemble, before manoeuvring his way across the room to stand by Lola’s side.

‘Is there anyone here you don’t know?’ She laughs. Ben glances towards Callum, raising an eyebrow.

‘A couple of people.’ He shrugs, taking a sip of his beer. Callum drops his eyes to the floor, only raising them again when a teammate – recognisable to Ben only by his coordinating costume in the absence of a rugby shirt – places a hand on his shoulder. Callum delivers a quick introduction before promising he’ll be _back soon_ , crossing the room to stand with the rest his team.

For a moment, Callum looks like he’s forgotten his lines. It’s not altogether untrue – he can _feel_ the weight of Ben’s gaze and the heat creeping up on the back of his neck as he struggles to remember how to be himself. He carefully removes his jacket, draping it over his arm as he leans easily against the wall beside him. He knows he’s playing to an audience too, and yes, maybe Ben’s better at this than he is, but it won’t stop him trying. Callum turns towards Ben, who visibly bites back a smile. If Ben wants a show, he can have one.

* * *

****

**_Group_ ** _: Ben (+447376269940), Lola (+447895921846), Callum (+447504287041), Jay (+447392602956)_

**1 st November**

[19:22] _Ben: Hair of the dog?_

[19:23] _Jay: Piss off_

[19:23] _Lola: Absolutely not_.

[19:30] _Callum:_ _Go on then_

The moment he reads Callum’s message, Ben considers returning to an old habit. It wouldn’t take much to think up a convincing excuse and suggest they try again tomorrow when Jay and Lola might be more inclined to join them for a _proper_ night out.

But Ben was never hoping for a proper night out. It was a simple enough imaginative leap to predict that Jay and Lola would turn him down – the only surprise was that Callum hadn’t turned him down too.

[19:32] _Ben: The Castle at 8?_

[19:33] _Callum: See you there_

* * *

It’s already gone eight by the time Ben arrives at campus, making his way through ornate iron gates and under the bricked archway of a clocktower as he approaches the perfectly landscaped courtyard that The Castle resides in. He crosses a checkerboard tiled pavement and pulls open the door, eyes scanning the room. Callum sits at the bar, chatting easily to the bartender, smile growing impossibly wider when he sees Ben walking towards him.

‘Alright?’ He greets, and Ben nods.

‘You want another? Seeing as you’ve already bought me two drinks.’ He offers, smirking. Callum’s smile finds the nervousness that Ben is accustomed to.

‘Yeah, go on then.’ He replies. Ben turns to the bartender, dropping the cash onto the bar.

‘Two beers please, mate.’ It’s busier in the pub than either of them had expected, and painfully bright compared to the subdued lighting of the courtyard – Ben hasn’t quite managed to shake the hangover that moving to a club sometime in the early hours has left him with. ‘Shall we go outside?’ He suggests, nodding towards the door as he slides one of the bottles that appear beside them towards Callum. Working under the assumption that Ben wants to smoke, Callum agrees, shrugging on his jacket and heading for the door.

They pass a number of unoccupied tables, each of them too close to an occupied one for Ben, who _ain’t in the mood to listen to other people tonight._ Callum tries not to wonder what exempts him from _people_.

They climb the first few steps of a white stone staircase, Ben emitting a groan as the two of them take a seat.

‘What time did the life and soul of the party make it home, then?’ Callum asks, carefully placing his drink on the step next to him.

‘Mate, I couldn’t even begin to guess.’ Ben laughs, shaking his head. A moment of quiet falls over them, both of them unsure what to say next but certain that small talk isn’t what they’re here for.

One of them has to bite the bullet, and this _was_ Ben’s idea.

‘So,’ He begins, eyes fixed on a marble statue illuminated by a series of spotlights across the courtyard. ‘You’re a rugby player doing a master’s in sociology.’ He takes a sip of his drink, looking for an action to spend his nervous energy on. ‘With a difficult family.’ He adds as an afterthought. Callum laughs, but agrees.

‘And you’re a business student with a difficult family that seems to know everyone on this campus.’ Ben nods. ‘And you’re not a social smoker.’

‘You what?’

‘You didn’t leave that house once last night.’ Callum, too, keeps his eyes trained on the statue in front of them, and Ben can’t remember if he’s even got a lighter on him. They’re slipping back into inferences, and this time Ben won’t run from them.

‘Is that you admitting you were watching me?’ He asks, picking at the label on his beer bottle.

‘Only if you admit it too.’

‘I’ll admit nothing of the sort.’

‘Then no, I wasn’t watching you.’ Neither of them are willing to tear their eyes away from the expanse of the courtyard, but their shared peripheral vision tells them they’re both smiling.

‘Alright, then. What else do you know?’ Ben asks cautiously, not quite sure if he’s prepared for the answer – Lola could have said anything, never expecting a friend from class to come face to face with her horror stories.

‘Not much more than that, really. You get up at gone midday, you’re getting firsts when you barely go to class, and you drink too much.’ Callum responds. Ben chuckles, shaking his head. ‘You?’ He finally turns to look at him.

‘You drink hot chocolate at ten in the morning, Lola thinks you’re giving Einstein a run for his money, and _you_ can’t hold your drink.’ Ben smirks. ‘That’s all.’

The anecdotes that Lola and Jay tell are merely outlines, planting seeds that speak to personalities and histories. If they want more, they’re going to have to find it themselves, and they're going to have to tread carefully. Ben starts small.

‘Why rugby, then?’ He asks. The momentary silence that follows suggests that Ben may have made a false move already.

‘I, uh. I did a gap year commission with the Army. Suppose I just missed that, you know? Missed being on a team.’ Callum explains. Ben knows that he’s not telling the full story, but he doesn't owe him the full story to begin with.

‘And sociology? What are you gonna do with it when we eventually get out of here?’ He laughs.

‘Didn’t take me long to figure out I didn’t want to join the Army full time. Properly, like.’ Callum takes a sip of his beer. ‘I’ll either go into counselling or join the police.’ He nods, as though he’s telling himself the information for the first time too.

Ben falls silent, suddenly understanding Jay’s _cops and robbers_ joke. He anxiously clenches his fists, the admission leaving him wondering why he couldn’t have just trusted his instinct and left well enough alone.

He stares across the courtyard, noticing for the first time a scattering of dorm rooms lit up in orange as somebody draws their curtains, and the chatter around the tables that the two of them had avoided when they’d left the pub. Every room he can see and every laugh he can hear belongs to a person that comes here and tells half a story; whichever half is best. But most of Ben’s story isn’t _his_ at all, so what is he supposed to say when Callum eventually breaks the silence to ask him:

‘What about you? Why business?’

Ben hesitates, clearing his throat before he speaks.

‘Me and Jay ran a car dealership for a couple of years, and I ran a garage with my dad, but home gets too small sometimes, don’t it?’ He laughs despite himself. ‘Me, Jay and Lo, we wanted to do something else. Something different. But no one really wanted to look at us without a bit of paper to prove that we knew how to do what we’ve been doing for years.’ He gestures around them. ‘So here we are.’

It’s not a lie; it’s half of the truth. It’s the part of the truth that’s his to tell – his and his alone. Whether he’s escaping a family-wide past that’s set in stone or a strand of his future that _this_ is supposed to rewrite, it doesn’t really matter - it all leads here, and he may as well enjoy it while it lasts. Ben drains the rest of his drink.

‘Do you want another?'


	5. magnum opus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the delay in this chapter!
> 
> hope you enjoy x

Callum runs his eyes along a seemingly never-ending sequence of books as he walks across the threadbare carpet of the Old Library. There’s a system to all this, revealed by a number printed on a tiny square of paper haphazardly adhered to the spine of each book with now-fading tape; a system of names and subjects that pays no mind to time. Each book is anachronised by those either side of it, and each person perched at a desk anachronised by the knowledge of every person who frequented the same space in decades gone by.

He pauses for a moment as the light of the just-risen sun breaking through the space between the two shelves that encompass him catches the embossed gold leaf title of a tome bound in cloth, dustjacket long-since abandoned, fraying corners and splitting spine betraying its age. It sits alongside a much smaller paperback, laminated at some point in its brief history, spine perfectly intact. Each of them, undoubtedly, the author’s magnum opus.

His mind begins to drift, reference number of the only book he was looking for entirely forgotten as he removes the paperback from the shelf and cautiously lifts the front cover, eyes scanning the page he finds beneath it – recently published, by comparison, but not _new_ – until he lands on an empty borrowing card. Not just intact, not just well-kept: it’s untouched, never having been borrowed at all.

Running the index finger of his other hand down the spine of the clothbound book, Callum is suddenly desperate to know what was so endlessly, ceaselessly intriguing about it to so many and why the same hasn’t yet been thought of every book on the shelf. The clothbound book _looks_ like it may well describe the innerworkings of the universe, and yet the only thing piquing his interest is this never-borrowed paperback that a library assistant thought enough of to decide to protect it, garish geometric cover and all.

The title of the book he’d come here for written on the back of his hand in a bright blue ballpoint pen is the only thing that stops him from taking the unread book out himself, just so that _somebody_ will have read it.

But it isn’t for him.

He closes the front cover – slowly, delicately, lest he become the first person to crease the spine out of sheer carelessness – and returns it to the shelf, regaining his focus and resuming his search.

Book now found and safely tucked under his arm, Callum begins to make his way towards the foyer, only to find greater distraction still as he spots a now-familiar figure leaning intently over a desk tucked away in the corner of the room, reading so closely from a laptop screen that the glasses framing his face can be of very little help. (Callum imagines that the need to wear them is the reason that Ben’s here instead of the main library.) Clad in a black hoodie, hood pulled up, hair peeking out from beneath it, he narrows his eyes, touching his fingertips to his lips in thought and frowning at what he’s reading before the thud of his typing ricochets from the ornate architecture of the reading room.

Callum takes another few steps, and Ben glances up as the sound of his footsteps on creaking floorboards mark his entrance. He smirks, pausing his typing for just a moment, and Callum takes his expression and the small continued display of productivity as an invitation.

‘Fancy seeing you here.’ Ben says, pulling down his hood as Callum approaches. The taller man checks his watch as he perches on the edge of Ben’s desk.

‘Bit early for you, ain’t it?’ He observes quietly. There’s nobody around to overhear them at this time in the morning, but there’s a fragility to this, as though they can trust the walls, but nobody else. Ben laughs as he finishes typing.

‘Bit late, actually.’ He pushes his laptop away from him.

‘You’ve been here all night?’ Callum frowns. Now that he’s looking at him properly, he does look a little worse for wear.

‘Yep.’ He responds – proud or ashamed, neither of them can be sure – and watches as Callum lifts the coffee cup he finds balanced on top of a stack of books, shaking it to check its contents.

‘Do you want another coffee?’ He asks, and Ben falters at the question. Between their evening spent on the stone stairs of the courtyard, and a number of group outings to the pub since, Ben’s completely lost count of which of them has bought the other the most drinks. Worse, still, he knows enough of Callum to know he was never keeping count in the first place.

Ben glances towards the coffee cup. He'd been expecting to be berated, and instead finds what Callum continues to prove to be unwavering kindness. 

‘I’ll try not to take that as an insult.’ Ben retorts, aiming to rebalance the conversation, to maintain the verbal brinkmanship. ‘Ain’t you gonna tell me I’m an idiot?’ He folds his arms across his chest as he leans back in his chair.

‘I reckon you already know that.’ Callum smiles. ‘Coffee, then?’ Ben shakes his head.

‘No, you’re alright. I’ve finished it now.’ He nods towards his laptop screen. ‘And with an hour to spare.’ He raises his eyebrows tauntingly. ‘Thank you, though.’ Neither proud nor ashamed, now – only sincere.

With Callum’s small nod, a comfortable silence settles, and maybe it’s the lack of sleep, but Ben finds that he’s not so interested in brinkmanship anymore.

The clocktower chimes from across campus, splintering the quiet that the two of them could happily have held forever, and Ben realises that he’d better submit the paper that’s kept him here all night. He uncrosses his arms and leans forwards again while Callum does what the clocktower could not, remaining silent as he watches Ben send off his paper, and catching the look of sheer relief on his face as he closes the lid of his laptop.

‘You off to training?’ Ben asks, gesturing to the bag perched on Callum's shoulder and running a hand over his face. Callum nods once more.

‘Training, class, and then a second-hand book shop up West.’ He adjusts the book tucked under his arm as Ben smiles incredulously.

‘Second-hand book shop? Have you ever heard of Amazon?’ He laughs, closing the cover of his notebook and replacing the lid on his pen. ‘Better yet, you could borrow it from this place, and have a seventh-hand book.’ He turns to face Callum in time to catch him rolling his eyes.

‘The book’s out of print, and they haven’t got a copy of it here.’ He explains. ‘Anyway, it’s something to do, ain’t it?’ He shrugs, hesitating for just long enough to give himself time to find the courage to continue. ‘I’d ask you to come with me, but I s’pose you’ll be spending the day sleeping this off.’ He gestures to the mess of business-related literature spread across Ben’s desk and spilling over to the neighbouring one. Ben nods, taking a moment to decide whether Callum has given Ben an out for Ben's benefit, or for his own.

Ben draws on the same pool of courage that Callum drew on moments earlier. 

‘I’m free tomorrow, though. If the book can wait a day.’ He pauses, shrugging. ‘Or if you can wait a day.’ Callum smiles.

Of course, he can.

And as if to prove the point, Callum waits patiently while Ben restores order to the chaos before him, gathering his belongings and building a small tower from the books that stand somewhere between the clothbound tome and the laminated paperback in their age and use.

Bens waits impatiently while Callum checks out the book that had brought him here to begin with.

‘I’ll see you tomorrow, then.’ Ben starts as the two of them step out onto the gravel just beyond the Old Library doors and into the morning sun, shielding his eyes against the daylight with his hand. ‘To go to a second-hand bookshop in the twenty-first century.’

* * *

‘Where are you off to?’ Lola asks from the sofa, watching Ben adjust his fleece-lined red checked jacket in a floor-length mirror. Ben exhales as he prepares to give his answer.

‘I am going to a second-hand book shop up West.’ He tells her, using Callum’s phrasing, tone suggesting that the idea is ridiculous. And it would be, wouldn’t it? If not for the fact it was Callum’s idea. Lola and Jay share bemused glances, before giving simultaneous responses.

‘Is that code for something?’ Lola laughs, as Jay asks: ‘Have you ever even been to a first-hand book shop?’ Ben rolls his eyes, crossing the room in search of his keys.

‘No, it isn’t. Yes, I have. Now if you’ll excuse me, as remarkable as your attempts at comedy are, I’m late.’ He raises his eyebrows.

‘Well, hold on! Who are you going with?’ Jay calls after him.

‘Mind your business!’ The slamming door punctuates his sentence.

He knows he’ll get the same question when he makes his return, too, but a past tense _who were you with?_ doesn’t hold the power to talk him out of this that _who are you going with?_ does. The follow up question will still be _how did that come about?_ – a fractionally more polite way to ask _why?_ – but Ben will simply say _he asked me to go_ , without thinking _good point_ , suspending his ever-present reservations in light of the memory being a far more surmountable obstacle than suspending them in light of possibility.

Ben arrives to the tube station to see Callum leaning against a beige brick wall next to a magazine stand, visibly lost in thought as he watches the crowds bustling past him. Though it’s the middle of November, now, the sun persists despite the drop in temperature, and Callum may as well be _basking_ in it. Wearing jeans and Chelsea boots, the collar of his navy fleece pullover is visible even above the corduroy collar of his jacket, and he pulls it higher still when a breeze brushes past. Ben does his best to bite back a smile as he approaches, his presence breaking Callum out of his trance.

‘Afternoon.’ The taller man greets, pushing his back away from the wall, making no attempt at all to subdue the smile that takes hold of his features as he speaks. At the expression on his face, Ben’s resolve breaks, and he finds himself reciprocating as he gestures to Callum’s form.

‘I didn’t know you owned any clothes that didn’t have your team’s emblem on them.’ He taunts, though they both know there’s no heat behind it.

‘How do you know my t-shirt doesn’t have the emblem on it?’ Callum frowns.

‘Does it?’ Ben enquires, placing his hands into his pockets.

‘Well, that would be telling.’ And then his smile’s back, and so, inevitably, is Ben’s. The two of them take the small lull in the conversation as a cue to head into the station. ‘You slept off your academic hangover, then.’ Callum says, as they make their way down a set of concrete stairs. Ben laughs as he removes his wallet from his pocket.

‘Yeah, just about.’ He replies. ‘Where’s this bookshop, anyway?’

‘Near Leicester Square.’ Callum tells him. ‘You’d miss it all together if you weren’t looking for it.’

‘You know there’s a casino in Leicester Square, don’t you? Far more difficult to miss, as well.’

‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ Callum laughs.

‘Well, we could have a _proper_ day out and make a fortune, and you want to go second-hand book shopping?’ Ben raises his eyebrows. ‘Ain’t too late to change your mind.’ The train arrives as Ben reaches the end of his sentence.

‘Standing around a roulette table ain’t gonna help me finish this degree, though, is it? We’ll have to make a fortune next time.’ Callum replies as the two of them board the train.

The racket that kicks up the moment the train begins to move coupled with the stoicism of London lunchtime commuters forces the two of them into silence, and in the thinking space that such an ambient noise and a conversational quiet provides, Ben knows that alarm bells should be ringing at the sound of _next time_ , at the two words that had proved such a problem not so long ago.

And all he can bring himself to think is _thank god for that_.

The journey from the train station to the book shop is short, and Callum couldn’t have been more right. Amidst the chaos of tourists, commuters, buskers, and taxis, Ben nearly walks past the shopfront altogether, until Callum places a hand on his shoulder and calls a bemused _Ben, it’s here_ after him as he steers him back in the right direction.

Stepping into the shop is like stepping into another world, the city forgotten in favour of this hidden treasure. Callum heads towards the shopkeeper, rattling off the name of his book, and Ben pauses to take in his surroundings. He crosses the room, listening absentmindedly to Callum’s conversation as he begins leafing through a stack of loose illustrated pages taken from other books, each selling for pocket change. For all Ben’s feigned disinterest in the errand he’d agreed to help Callum run, he can’t help but find something about this sacrilegious, knowing that the block of text at the bottom of the page he holds is missing its beginning and its end, and that a book somewhere is missing part of its middle. He places the pages back down.

The shopkeeper directs Callum to the book he asks after, and Ben materialises beside him as Callum takes it from the shelf. As the advertisement on the shop’s website had promised, the book is almost new. Ben holds his hands out, a silent request to look at the book he’s followed the man beside him to Leicester Square for. Callum obliges without hesitation.

The first few pages jump up when not held down, revealing haphazard highlighting and some annotations in pencil scrawled in the margins. Ben turns the book in his hands to read the blurb, aiming to find something to comment on, and Callum sees that beyond the first few pages, the rest of the spine holds not a single crease. Somebody _began_ reading it; began annotating; began to understand it.

‘What do you reckon? One owner?’ Ben asks, speaking as though he’s about to try and sell Callum a used car. Callum thinks back to the clothbound book and the laminated paperback.

‘Does it matter?’ He asks, hoping Ben will give him an answer he couldn’t quite reach on his own less than thirty-six hours ago.

‘Does it matter how many people have owned it?’

‘Owned it, read it. Whatever.’ The taller man shrugs.

‘Well, you’ll pay for more for it the newer it looks, won’t you?’ Ben asks. For a moment, Callum wonders if Ben is simply too business-minded for them to reach an answer.

Still, he persists.

‘But does that mean it’s worth more?’ He asks. ‘What if it’s antique?’ He gestures to a shelf marked _Rare Books_ and crosses the room to stand by it, Ben instinctively following him. With his free hand, Ben carefully lifts the cover of a book that announces its publication date as sometime in the eighteenth century, revealing a metallic marbled pattern on the inside. Ben’s sure he should be impressed, but instead he simply closes the cover again.

‘It’s worth more to _you_ , though, ain’t it? The book you’re here for?’ He asks. ‘You won’t give three hundred quid for that,’ he gestures somewhat dismissively to what he assumes is a collector’s item, judging by the unavoidably recognisable name of the author, and then places the book all this is for back in Callum’s hands. ‘But you’ll give eighty for this, even though it ain’t an antique. Doesn’t matter if it’s popular, doesn’t matter if it’s the obvious choice, because it’s the one you need.’

Callum just looks at him for a moment, because Ben’s just given an answer to a question that’s been plaguing him all day without a second thought. The laminated paperback wasn’t for him, but it will be for someone.

_This_ book, the one he holds, is for him, even if this copy has only been properly attempted by one other person in its history. 

Callum gives Ben a gentle smile, and Ben correctly interprets his expression as an indication of his contentment with such an explanation.

By the time they step back out onto the streets of London, Callum clutching a canvas bag he’s paid too much for as a small repayment for the amount of time the two of them spent in the shop to still leave with only one book, the sun is well on its way to setting, casting an orange glow across the city.

‘What do you reckon?’ Ben asks, gesturing to the casino as the two of them step out of the side street that houses the book shop and back into the flow of crowds.

‘We ain’t come here to gamble.’ Callum laughs. Ben checks his watch, hesitating for a moment before finding himself so emboldened by the anonymity that this part of the city is offering him that he can’t quite help but make his next suggestion.

‘What about dinner, then?’ He tries.

‘Dinner?’

‘Yeah. What’s the alternative? A Pot Noodle?’ He smirks.

‘I can cook, thank you.’ Callum counters, placing a hand on his chest in mock offence.

‘Not as well as the head chef at that restaurant.’ Ben gestures vaguely to an entire row of restaurants. Callum opens his mouth to speak, ready to make another retaliation, but Ben holds up a hand to stop him. ‘If you really believe you can, you can prove it after we go to a casino.’ Ben speaks, knowing the latter is likely never to happen. ‘Until then, just humour me.’ He smiles.

So, Callum humours him, following him into a restaurant that, if they’re honest, they’re drastically underdressed for.

The conversation is light, _easy_ , the bottle of wine they share doing its fair share of the work, and neither of them truly realises what they’re doing, how easy it is to call this a date, until the waiter presents them with the bill and asks _all together?_ as he presses a button on the card machine in his hand.

The two of them share a panicked glance.

‘I’ll get it, if you want.’ Ben offers. ‘It was my idea.’ Callum shakes his head, frowning as he takes his wallet from his pocket.

‘My fault we’re here in the first place.’ He says, smile replacing his frown.

‘Split it, then?’ Ben says, which is as close as he can get to _please, don’t call this a fault_ without giving himself away completely. Callum nods, passing his card to the waiter.

As he watches Ben repeat the action a moment later, he drops his hand to the back of the chair next to him, fingertips brushing against the handle of the canvas bag that holds a book he feels suddenly indebted to.

He looks across the table towards a demeanour that screams I-won’t-wear-a-proper-Halloween-costume-even-when-everyone-else-will, and knows that this permanently understated appearance deliberately constructed to appear effortless is not what truly intrigues him.

It’s the first few pages that won’t stay down unless somebody holds them down, and that he’s watched Ben try to hold those pages down himself, and that Callum’s done the same to his own pages. That’s what intrigues him.

It’s the anecdotes that his friends tell about him without saying his name, that prove their endless concern for him, that prove there’s something, someone, to be known, that he _wants_ to know.

‘Shall we go, then?’ Ben asks, soft smile gracing his face as he rests his hands on the edge of the table. Callum nods, and the two of them head towards the door.

Ben halts their journey only a moment later, telling Callum that he’ll be _one minute – I’ll meet you outside_. Callum frowns, but continues, pulling his jacket around himself as he steps out onto the street and Ben heads back to the table.

He pulls a twenty-pound note from his wallet, folding it and placing it underneath the edge of his plate. While Callum feels indebted to a book, Ben feels indebted to the day in its entirety, and in lieu of the ability to repay time itself, he’ll pay something forward to whoever happens to pick that plate up.

‘What was that about?’ Callum asks as Ben finally appears beside him.

‘Forgot something. Let’s go.’ He beams, and, before they know it, they’re back on a train.

At this time in the evening, the racket of the underground does not force its multitude of passengers into silence, instead motivating them to outdo the metallic clanging with a racket of their own.

Callum holds onto an overhead bar, barely stretching at all, while Ben assures him that he can _keep his balance, thank you very much_. Ben cranes to be heard by the taller man as they continue their conversation, Callum tilting his head downwards to meet him, and as the train suddenly jolts Ben’s assurance proves itself to be a lie.

He stumbles slightly, instinctively resting a hand against Callum’s chest to steady himself as the taller man rests a hand on the small of his back. Ben mutters a small _sorry_ as he clears his throat, and Callum’s _it’s alright_ tells him what an utter _fool_ he is to think he could repay the day with a twenty-pound note.

* * *

‘How was the book shop?’ Lola says, as Ben closes the front door behind him.

‘Yeah. Yeah, it was good.’ Is Ben’s noncommittal response as he sheds his coat.

‘Good? Ben, you’ve been gone hours.’ She laughs.

‘It’s a book shop, Lo. What more do you want me to say?’ He shrugs, taking a seat on the sofa and taking a handful of popcorn from the bowl perched on her lap.

‘Well, telling us who you went with would be a start.’ Jay interjects.

‘I went with Callum.’ Ben says, and Jay and Lola share an inquisitive glance.

‘How did that happen?’ Jay laughs.

‘He asked me to go.’


	6. close enough

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm truly so, so sorry for how long this has taken! every time i sat down to write, i just went blank. i'll try to update more regularly but i'm currently in the midst of finishing my own degree so i'm sorry in advance if there's another delay before the next chapter.
> 
> for anyone who's interested, this is the song/edit that helped me finish the ending. i based some of the specifics on the lyrics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHNWWZaKPCM
> 
> hope you enjoy x

He should be terrified by the mere thought of this.

He _was_ terrified by the mere thought of this, all of six weeks ago, but he was right about the power of a memory.

Everything began with a marker of possibility with no foundation of certainty; a _next time_ with no _this time_ , no _last time_ ; a promised future with no present, no past to build on.

With so little information about Callum to go on, no possibility could be eliminated: every future Ben had imagined was perfectly plausible. All of them, in fact, _simultaneously_ plausible, and entirely overwhelming on that basis, all those ideas running away with themselves in fast forward and reaching an inevitable, terrifying end only seconds after they had begun in Ben’s imagination.

Talking to Callum, being with Callum and letting the time they spend together create common ground between them, a tangible base to walk on, build on, without the too-quick arrival of the reason that ground will _have_ to fall through – well, it’s been like meeting him all over again.

Like meeting him for the first time, even, because though Lola had introduced them Ben’s own fear had refused to let him truly encounter this then-stranger.

But now they’ve shared all these little moments, few enough to count if either of them were so inclined, but each of them somehow momentous, each of them so revealing.

Callum isn’t just a list of empty facts. He’s not just a symbol of any and all outcomes. The infinite possibility that had offered itself in the first instance grows ever smaller, ever calmer. This isn’t just a thought anymore, and somehow there’s comfort in the reality of it.

Ben can’t be certain exactly how all of this will play out, but the past can now afford him some rationality; the _last times_ they’ve already had are grounding in their limitless warmth.

(And though he may still be reluctant to admit it, still apprehensive, Ben now can’t help but keep hoping for one of them to promise another _next time_ , and waiting for that moment in which that _next time_ becomes _this time_.)

So, forgive him for the smile he’s trying to bite back.

Callum sits at a table for two in the library café, stationery spread about across the table, navy blue satin bomber jacket draped over the back of his chair as he sips from a takeaway coffee cup.

A small, knowing thought forms as Ben crosses from the glass doors of the library’s entrance and takes in the scene before him: _that cup is_ _holding anything but coffee_.

He wants to recollect himself, berate himself for having retained the details of Callum’s idiosyncrasies, and instead he loses what little hold he had left of the bitten-back smile as he watches Callum scrawl commentary into a pristinely kept notebook, with _the_ book open in front of him, displaying a page not yet annotated by its previous owner.

‘Well, I hope it was worth the train fare.’ Ben says by way of a greeting as he approaches him, placing a gentle hand on his shoulder as he rounds the table that the taller man occupies.

Callum laughs, doesn’t even lift his pen from the page as he makes his response.

‘It was.’ He assures him, nodding as reaches the end of his thought. He pauses, clicks his pen a few times as he stumbles on his own train of thought before removing his backpack from the chair opposite him. It’s a silent invitation to join him that Ben immediately accepts, dropping his phone onto the table. ‘Not quite the book shop, is it?’ Callum smiles, gesturing to their surroundings, all floor-to-ceiling glass windows and bustling crowds as students rush to and from their classes.

Ben drops down into the chair with a sigh, casting his eyes down towards the table at the mention of the shop itself, turning over a highlighter that Callum’s discarded.

‘Not nearly as close to a casino, either.’ He says, aiming to regain some ground in the conversation. He laughs a little as Callum gently takes the highlighter from Ben’s hand.

‘Probably for the best.’ He mutters. He highlights a line of his own handwriting and then instinctively gives the marker back to Ben, falling silent, and second guessing the action only after the fact as Ben begins to turn it over again.

Callum flips over the page in his book.

He’s right, this isn’t quite the book shop, and as the realisation settles Ben begins to regret mentioning it at all.

The whole day seemed to have taken place somewhere else entirely. A different part of London to where they now sit, of course, but a different life too. The treasure trove that concealed itself with a pristine shopfront was secluded even on one of the city’s busiest streets, and the aura it exuded was still clinging to them as they fell back into reality.

Some small part of Ben’s imagination wonders what might happen if he went back there now – would it still be there, or had Callum had conjured it up himself?

To bring that too-good-to-be-true world here, to this halogen-lit, granite-tiled, shell of a building where anybody at all might walk past and overhear them, interrupt their perfect recollections with some mundane anecdote or aimless conversation starter that will only fall short in comparison seems a dangerous game to play.

Suddenly it’s all too _fragile_ : the memory itself, and the fact that Ben’s starting to fool himself into believing that Callum’s as invested in the perfection of the memory as Ben is.

Maybe Ben’s misremembering in the first place, making the whole thing bigger in his mind.

But, then again, maybe Callum is too.

He feels the need to change the subject, if only to preserve that memory – whoever it now belongs to – as though talking about it too much might begin to rewrite it.

Desperate for something as light as small talk, he’s a second away from making a comment about the weather when Callum raises his eyes for a split second as he checks his watch. His voice alleviates the building tension.

‘Have you eaten?’ He asks, eyes back on the page, still reading even as he talks.

Ben doesn’t notice his memories scarpering as he starts to build another, slipping back into nonchalance. 

‘Are you offering to prove you’re a better chef than half of London’s top restaurateurs?’ He smirks, resting his elbows on the table. Callum sighs, shaking his head slightly as he closes his book.

‘Actually, I was suggesting we could buy sandwiches.’ He smiles. Ben scrunches up his face in disapproval, lets out a deliberately laboured sigh as he leans back in his chair.

‘I reckon if I unlocked my phone right now,’ he picks up the device, raising it as if to emphasise his point. ‘I’d have three people making me better lunch offers.’ He taunts.

‘And yet you came and sat with me anyway. So, by all means.’ Callum dares him, gesturing to the phone still hovered in the air.

Ben holds his gaze for a moment, expecting him to falter, but Callum only raises his eyebrows. He slides his phone back into his pocket, their eyes still locked as he begins to lose hold of another smile.

‘Am I about to find out something else I wish I didn’t know?’ He asks as he stands, taking his wallet from the pocket of his black denim jacket.

‘Like what?’ Callum frowns as he begins placing his books back into his bag.

‘Like the fact that you don’t like coffee. You got some kind of vendetta against cheese, or something?’ He shrugs. The taller man laughs as he shakes his head.

‘Are you trying to ask me what sandwich I want?’ He asks. Ben nods, smirking. ‘Surprise me.’

He returns a few minutes later, haphazardly dropping their lunch onto the table in such a way that leaves Callum having to stop a bottle of water from rolling onto the floor. Callum eyes the selection suspiciously, trying his best to hide the fact that he knows he won’t like what Ben’s picked, but with one look at his face Ben rolls his eyes and silently switches the sandwiches.

Callum mutters a quiet _thank you_ , telling him that he _did well with the crisps, though_.

‘For future reference,’ Ben starts. ‘That’s what happens when you tell me to surprise you. It don’t end well.’

The two of them dissolve into light laughter as Ben silently takes stock of the information – doesn’t like ham, _does_ like ready salted crisps – before he realises he’s doing it again, memorising this man’s idiosyncrasies and, in memorising them, making them _matter_.

Because this is different to that list of facts he started with, isn’t it? This isn’t the outline: it’s detail. He waits for some voice inside him to tell him to stop, for his heart rate to pick up and his subconscious to tell him to run.

And the voice never comes.

He wants detail.

A few minutes pass, and then those few minutes run away with themselves, because they’ve been here for well over two hours now, and neither of them want to be the first to bring this to an end.

Ben had been worrying that someone would interrupt their momentary recollection of a golden memory with the mundane, unwittingly settled _for_ the mundane, and struck gold again anyway.

That feeling he’s been savouring, that feeling that had enveloped them in the bookshop, had very little to do with the bookshop after all. The halogen lights and granite tiles of this elaborate structure that shields them from rain racing its way down each pane of glass have always, _always_ seemed cold to Ben, but now the impersonal radiates the same limitless warmth as the otherworldly, clinging to them in all the same ways that a tangible history bound in pages and the muffled sounds of the city had.

And it’s all so _easy_.

Ben begins to wonder how Callum does this so effortlessly, how he can talk so comfortably for this long, but suddenly Callum is turning to smile at somebody approaching them.

‘Alright, Jay?’ He greets the interruption.

‘Alright.’ Jay claps his hand onto Callum’s shoulder. ‘Don’t you two look cosy?’ He laughs, and Ben nearly blushes as he flounders in search of something witty to say.

‘Actually, I’d better get going. I’ve got a class in ten minutes.’ Callum says as he gets to his feet.

‘Well, I s’pose that means you can stay here with me and get some work done.’ Jay says, looking to Ben.

‘In your dreams.’ Ben laughs. ‘You’re already taking up enough of my time tonight.’

‘What’s tonight?’ Callum asks, purely out of instinctive curiosity.

‘Beer and football in the flat while Lola’s having a night out.’ Jay tells him. ‘You can join us if you like.’

‘I’d love to,’ Callum starts, and Ben begins to hold his breath, eyes so fixed on the empty water bottle in his hand that he doesn’t see the apologetic smile that Callum’s wearing. ‘But I can’t – I’ve got training.’ He adds. Ben exhales as discreetly as possible. Jay nods in understanding.

‘Next time, then.’ Jay offers as Callum places the strap of his bag over his shoulder.

‘Next time.’ He promises. ‘I’ll see you later.’ He says with a small, somewhat timid wave as Ben finally looks up.

Ben can only smile.

* * *

‘Can’t remember the last time we did this.’ Jay says, disbelief evident even in his tone as he hands Ben a bottle of beer.

‘I can’t remember the last time I saw you without Lo.’ Ben retorts light-heartedly. Jay opens his mouth to respond but seems to catch hold of the thought a split-second before he verbalises it.

Ben knows what he was about to say. The response was constructed so quickly it can only have been a spin on Ben’s own words.

_I can’t remember the last time I saw you without Callum_.

An exaggeration. Obviously. But spoken with intent if it _had_ been spoken.

So, Ben pretends he hasn’t noticed Jay biting his tongue, preoccupying himself with emptying a bag of popcorn into a bowl and setting it on the coffee table as silence weighs heavy between them.

That is, until Jay finds another way to make the same point, a way that pretends to be noncommittal and doesn’t lay quite so much at Ben’s door.

‘Shame Callum couldn’t join us.’

‘Is it? Am I not good enough company for you anymore?’ Ben laughs: a joke delivered so lightly that it appears to contain no truth. In actuality it’s a thought that had stuck with him in the two weeks he’d spent avoiding Callum, and something twists inside him as he asks the question.

This time, Jay doesn’t hesitate in responding.

‘I could say the same.’ And then he laughs too, each of them having accidentally committed to the farce, now, buying into the pretence that this conversation doesn’t mean anything.

‘What’s that meant to mean?’

‘Well, you’ll go to a second-hand book shop in the middle of nowhere for Callum, but you won’t stay at a library you’re already in for me.’

Ben is bordering on _outraged_ that Jay would make reference to a memory that isn’t his. He’s unwilling to engage in any elaboration and follow a conversational path that might require him to share that memory.

‘Leicester Square ain’t the middle of nowhere, Jay. And I’d already been in the library for ages.’ He says, tone admittedly smug as he convinces himself he’s put an end to this.

Jay’s too well-versed in his deflection, though. He nods to himself, laughing as he removes the cap from another bottle of beer, and with the sound of that laughter alone – real, this time, not forced, not farcical, but somehow _knowing_ – Ben’s certain he’s been found out.

‘What?’ He asks, distracting himself with rearranging a blanket that’s draped over the arm of the sofa as Jay appears beside him.

‘With Callum.’ Ben gestures for him to elaborate as they each take a seat. ‘You’d already been in the library for ages,’ He pauses, raising his eyebrows. ‘With Callum.’

‘And?’

‘Just an observation.’

‘It ain’t just an observation though, is it?’ Ben sighs, shuffling towards the edge of his seat and turning to face Jay. ‘One minute you and Lo were annoyed with me for because I didn't want to talk to your new mate and the next I’m talking to him too much. You wanna make your mind up.’ He nods towards Jay’s form.

‘I never said you were talking to him too much.’ Jay responds, frowning as he shakes his head a little. His voice is measured: considerably, notably calmer than Ben’s. For the second time in the same day Ben wonders why everybody else can do this so easily, be this _open_ so easily. ‘And for the record, no one was annoyed with you because you wouldn’t talk to him, we were _worried_.’ Ben rolls his eyes.

‘About what?’

‘About _you_ disappearing for two weeks thinking that we couldn’t tell you were lying about where you were going or that we wouldn’t see the empty bottles in the kitchen bin.’ It tumbles out of his mouth too seamlessly for this to be the first time he’s talked about it.

Ben chuckles.

At himself, mostly.

At the fact he’d tricked himself into believing he could trick everyone else too. Callum had noticed after two weeks of _not_ knowing him that something was wrong – how had Ben ever convinced himself that Jay and Lola wouldn’t notice after knowing him all this time?

That’s all it takes for the conversation to start erasing the memories, because there’s a chance that Callum hadn’t being paying attention when he’d approached Ben in the beer garden, when Ben had thanked him for noticing, but that he didn’t _need_ to be paying attention to notice something so _obvious_.

Before the conversation can erase anything else, Ben decides to end it entirely, in the way he knows best.

‘If we were anything more than mates do you really think I’d _still_ be talking to him?’ He says, settling back into the sofa as he regains his composure. A thoughtful expression momentarily falls over Jay’s features.

‘I suppose not.’ He says dismissively, shrugging slightly.

‘Exactly. So, are we watching this game or not?’ Ben reaches forward, grabbing the remote control from the table.

He barely watches the match, just stays staring, unfocussed, somewhere in the direction of the TV at best. He mimics all of Jay’s reactions: cheering when Jay cheers, sighing when Jay sighs. He thinks the right team win, but if he’s honest he can’t remember.

Because the end of their tense conversation does not put an end to the erasure of all those memories.

All those _last times_ start in the garden of the pub, when Callum had _noticed_ and had laid the first brick in their foundation by telling Ben that he understood. The memory doesn’t hold if the thing that Callum had noticed was self-evident, and neither does any other.

One by one, Ben convinces himself that _last time_ does not shine with that golden haze he was so sure of only hours before.

He accepts, begrudgingly, that he’s not as good a liar as he thought he was, that the _Mitchell_ in him doesn’t extend so far as to let him lie to another Mitchell, or maybe to anyone at all.

Jay’s _goodnight!_ as the two of them retreat a few hours after the match ends leaves Ben cold as he closes his bedroom door behind him, thinking that there is no less accurate description of the evening he’s spent inside his own head than _good_.

* * *

The following day, he convinces himself that his next move makes sense. It’s a move he makes with a man he knows only by a username. He’s making the lies true.

He and Callum are just friends, and if they were anything more, if Ben felt anything more, then they wouldn’t still be talking. It would all have been over by now, as quickly as it had started.

**_Group_ ** _: Ben (+447376269940), Lola (+447895921846), Callum (+447504287041), Jay (+447392602956)_

[13:57] _Jay: I take it you won’t be gracing us with your presence Ben?_

[14:02] _Lola: Do you ever actually go to class?_

[14:09] _Ben: Tell him I’m ill_

And an hour later, between Ben and this stranger he’d found himself attracted to, that for this short time he was more-than-friends with, it _is_ all over as quickly as it had started.

In the hours that follow, Callum's lack of response doesn’t surprise Ben – why should Callum take any interest in what’s stopping him from going to a lecture? But he does respond, eventually, though not in the somewhat public arena in which Jay had first posed his ill-judged attempt at humour.

[20:23] _Callum:_ _You okay?_

The question catches Ben off-guard, and he’s thankful that he’s alone in his room, where Jay and Lola aren’t around to quiz him on why he looks so startled.

[20:38] _Ben: What?_

[20:39] _Callum: You said you were ill_

Ben suppresses the instantaneous, overwhelming wave of guilt that washes over him. The possibility that Callum would believe the excuse designed for a professor whose name Ben can’t remember hadn’t even crossed Ben’s mind, especially not when Lola and Jay had seen through the lie so easily.

But Ben hadn’t yet given Callum a reason to stop believing in him.

[20:40] _Ben: Ah_

[20:40] _Ben: Not quite_

[20:41] _Ben: I said tell our professor I’m ill_

There’s a lull in the conversation. The silence barely lasts five minutes, but each of them is made of elastic, stretching into hours.

Ben has no way of knowing that Callum is spending each illusory second agonising over whether he’s in any position to ask anything more, trying to convince himself that _yes, he is_.

[20:47] _Callum: You’re alright then?_

[20:48] _Callum: Where were you?_

He can’t say _I’m fine! Sorry to have worried you_ and leave Callum’s second question unanswered, and to answer the second requires him to be so heavy handed as to shatter what little hope either of them might have left, if Callum was ever hoping at all. So, he’ll answer neither. He'll be Ben.

[20:49] _Ben: Let’s see if I can get this right. I do not have to say anything but it may harm my defence if I do not mention when questioned something which I later rely on in court._

[20:50] _Ben: How was that?_

The pause is longer this time, and Ben knows that in his determinacy to keep the upper hand he’s broken whatever it was he was trying to protect: in the fifteen minutes that have passed Callum has figured out what Ben was trying to hide.

This time, Callum doesn’t care if he’s in the position to respond in the way he does. If Ben wants to be so _careless_ about this, then Callum will follow suit.

[21:05] _Callum: Someone made you a better lunch offer then._

Ben reads the message as soon as it appears, and within seconds he’s picking up his keys from the windowsill and shrugging on his jacket as he heads for the front door.

‘Where are you going?’ Lola calls from the sofa, stopping him in his tracks.

‘Out.’ He says simply, hand still hovering over the door handle.

‘With Callum?’ Jay chuckles, and in his peripheral vision Ben catches Lola shaking her head at him.

‘On my own.’ He turns to see the two of them angled towards the TV.

‘Well, hang on. This is boring me to tears,’ Lola gestures to their choice of viewing. ‘We’ll come with you.’

Lola’s about as good at lying to Ben as Ben is at lying to Lola, and with one look at her face he knows that Jay has told her about their strained pre-match conversation. He imagines it didn’t take her long to draw the connection between that conversation and the reason he skipped his class today.

He nods, surprising even himself with the realisation that, in fact, he doesn’t want to be on his own at all.

‘Right.’ She says as she stands, frown betraying her confusion that Ben had relented so easily. ‘Just give me a second to get changed.’

* * *

It’s not long before they arrive at the Student Union club. There are a million other places they could have chosen, most of them far better than this, but Ben was more than happy to settle for whatever source of alcohol was nearest to them.

He’s propping up the bar, finishing his third drink as Jay and Lola finish their first.

Jay watches him drop his head into his hands. He knows just as well as Ben does that this, being here, isn’t helping anybody. He’s about to suggest that they quit while they’re ahead, tell Ben that they can just call it a night now and start again in the morning, but before he gets the chance Lola is pulling on his arm as the song changes. Jay gestures to Ben.

‘He’s not going to move from that seat.’ She promises, leaning in close to be heard over the music, and so Jay follows, Ben watching them go.

In what little privacy his seat at the bar affords him, he reads Callum’s text over and over again, countless times, as he quickly makes another two drinks disappear, the white light of his screen fighting against the blues and greens of the stage lighting ricocheting from every surface in the room.

The alcohol coursing through him should be numbing him, but instead it’s just _magnifying_ everything, each conflicting emotion looming so large now that he can’t avoid any of them.

He presses the heels of his hands against his eyes as something stirs inside him, threatening to spill over. The privacy of the bar isn’t enough now – he needs some fresh air. The irony of finding himself simultaneously wishing for a cigarette is not lost on him.

He places his phone in his pocket and crosses through the crowds, out into the open. He takes a few deep, sobering breaths, taking in the evening air as he perches himself on a brick wall, paying little mind to the moss creeping through the brickwork.

‘Fancy seeing you here.’ A voice greets him. Ben turns to see Callum approaching him, having abandoned the group that Ben now recognises as his teammates. ‘Drowning your sorrows?’ He asks, gesturing to the bottle in Ben’s hand.

‘Something like that.’ Ben nods, doing his best to avoid his gaze as he deposits the bottle on the wall beside him.

‘Have you taken something?’ Callum frowns, placing his fingertips underneath Ben’s chin and tilting his head up to get a better look at him underneath the glow of a streetlamp.

‘No, Talk to Frank.’ Ben shakes his head, gently pushing his hand way and hoping that the joke will stop him asking for the real reason that Ben’s eyes are red. Only, it doesn’t.

‘Are you alright?’ Callum continues. Ben doesn't deserve for Callum to be asking him that question a second time. So, he tries again.

‘Who am I talking to this time? Counsellor Callum?’

‘What’s that meant to mean?’

‘Well, you were interrogating me earlier…’ Ben scratches his stubble in a mock display of thought as Callum shakes his head.

‘I wasn’t interrogating you.’ He interjects.

‘So, I assumed that was PC Highway. Which makes this,’ He gestures to Callum’s form. ‘Counsellor Callum.’

Ben brushes off the voice in the back of his mind that tells him that even these attempts to push Callum away are proof of the details he has involuntarily memorised and now can’t let go of.

‘You ain’t going to be able to make me feel bad for caring, Ben.’ Callum tells him.

That’s all it takes to wipe the smug smile off of his face. The rugby player sits himself down next beside him as a silence settles between them despite the muffled sound of the music pushing against the walls of the club and filtering into the night each time somebody opens the door to move in or out.

They’ve created a moment of quiet that gives Ben’s mind space to start racing again.

For all their obvious differences, Ben knows that there are parts of their histories that the two of them share. A lot has happened between them since they first sat as they are now, side by side, albeit on a picnic bench, but Ben had known that some overlap existed even then.

But even with all these retained details, Ben _still_ doesn’t understand how two people from such similar worlds can grow to become such disparately different people.

‘Why doesn’t it bother you?’ He asks suddenly, turning to face Callum.

‘Why doesn’t what bother me?’

‘That it’s this awful.’

‘That what’s this awful?’ Callum’s nearly laughing now, assuming that Ben is talking for the sake of talking, spurred on by one too many beers.

‘All of it.’ There’s something so hollow about the way Ben speaks, and so pleading in his eyes. Callum understands that the question is sincere, and so his response is sincere too.

‘Because it’s not _all_ awful. It’s not _always_ awful.’ He smiles softly. His attention is momentarily captured by the door swinging open again as Jay and Lola appear, and Callum is compelled to continue, to get as far as he can before the inevitable interjection. ‘There's people in the world that stop things from being awful. All it takes is a couple of good friends,’ He gestures to Jay and Lola, but Ben is hanging on his every word, eyes entirely fixated on him, and he misses the gesture entirely. ‘Or—’ He means to continue, to say that it's letting yourself be hopeful that wards off the feeling that Ben is describing, but an exclamation stops him.

‘Ben!’ Lola calls as she finally spots the two of them.

Callum silently wishes that they wouldn’t keep getting interrupted like this. He hadn’t even gotten to the end of his thought this time — at this rate they’ll have to keep going to the other side of London if they ever want to get anywhere, make any semblance of sense from whatever exists between them.

‘Answer your phone if you’re going to disappear, yeah?’ She berates as she pulls Callum into an embrace.

Ben tunes out of the small talk unravelling beside him as he realises what Callum’s just said.

Good friends.

Ben doesn't realise that Callum had been referring to Jay and Lola, and convinces himself in ten seconds flat that Callum finds it all so easy because they really _are_ just friends. 

He turns to him again, watches his expression change as he talks, as animated always, and decides in that moment that he’ll sooner settle for close enough than for nothing at all.

He'll take just friends if it means Callum will stay. 

**Author's Note:**

> you can find me @bxnmitchell on twitter!
> 
> comments and kudos always appreciated! x


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